UB DSP has released Vowel Blender, a formant filter plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Vowel Blender is the second plugin from UB DSP, following Grit Blender.
Its main feature is a 2D phonetic XY pad. Instead of choosing a few preset vowel shapes from a menu, you drag a cursor through a vowel space based on real speech recordings, and the plugin retunes the formants in real time.
The pad includes ten vowels from the International Phonetic Alphabet, arranged around the idea of tongue and jaw position. You can pick from seven voice models, covering three women, three men, and a kids model, each built from established speech research datasets.
This unique setup makes Vowel Blender feel closer to playing a filter than editing a static vocal effect. You can put it on a synth lead, bass, drum loop, or even a vocal, then drag around the pad to make the source speak, chant, or shift through more abstract formant colors.
The motion recorder lets you record a movement on the pad and loop it in sync with your DAW, with forward, backward, and ping-pong playback. If you don’t want to draw a movement from scratch, there are 13 built-in shapes, including circles, spirals, squares, diphthongs, and an all-vowels path.
Vowel Blender also includes a deeper modulation system than you might expect from a vowel filter. There are nine modulator types, including LFO, MSEG, step sequencer, audio oscillator, envelope generator, envelope follower, macro, MIDI, and XY pad modulation.
Modulators can also modulate other modulators, so there is plenty of room for animated sound design.
The plugin has a pre-formant pitch shifter with a +/-12 semitone range, plus character controls for Drive, Humanize, Size, and Alien. Humanize adds slow formant drift, Size changes the perceived vocal tract, and Alien pushes the sound away from realistic voice behavior.
Another useful detail is the LOWS crossover, which lets the low end bypass the formant processing. That should be especially useful on basses, drum buses, or full loops where you want the talking midrange effect without thinning out the fundamental.
Vowel Blender ships with 38 factory presets across six categories, including vocals, synths/keys, bass, creative, and sound design. A free unlimited trial is available, and the full version is currently $39 as an introductory offer until July 1st. The regular price is $68.
Vowel Blender is available in CLAP, VST3, AU, and AAX formats. It runs on macOS 10.13 or higher (Intel and Apple Silicon), Windows 10 or higher, and 64-bit Linux.
Download: UB DSP Vowel Blender ($39 intro price)
Last Updated on June 2, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
